"Maggie, tell me what the word 'family' means to you?" the interviewer asked.
     She said, "A parent or parents with a child or children."
     "You use the word 'or' a lot. We prefer 'and' at the AFU. Mother and father. You see, of course, the distinction? It's 'American Families United', except we like to say 'We-knighted.' Listen: Do you think family is critical to the nation's survival?"
     "I do," she lied.
     It was the third association to interview her. She had also lied to the MHA (Manufactured Housing Association) and the AGA (Association of Gay Americans). "Alphabet soup," she called D.C..
     Her best friend Bonnie had suggested association work. Bonnie knew Maggie was bright, a good writer, and passionate - passionate, at least, to Bonnie, who knew the many things beneath Maggie's surface: the scratch marks on her white walls, the great beasts beneath her beige carpets, the guffaws behind her almost frowns and not-quite smiles. To work with people emboldened by ideas would empower Maggie, as they say, for Maggie was like that girl on the Brady Bunch: All she needed was to practice walking with a book on her head, remove those ugly plastic glasses and learn basic makeup technique. Then the veil would drop and flutes would trill at the tying of her shoelaces and drums would roll at the fastening of her bra. A Reverie for Maggie, playing all day long.
     That morning they'd had a disagreement. "Is this about you or me?" Maggie asked. "It's like you want this job more than me. I don't like these association people. They're extreme. They all believe one main thing and that's all."
      "I'm just trying to help, Maggie," Bonnie said. "Really. You moved here after me and you're miserable, and that makes me unhappy."
     "Then I'll go home."
     "What's at home?"
     "But these people are extreme."
     "They just have views, that's all. There's nothing wrong with views. Besides, I bet there's all kinds of people who just do their jobs and go home. People everywhere have their beliefs."
     "Anyway," Maggie said, "you're not responsible for me. I'm not your child."
     "I know that," Bonnie said, touching Maggie's cheek. "I'm just trying to help. Don't think me a dirty fish."
     Maggie tucked a resume in her binder. "I'll go," she said, wanting to add, "I made up 'dirty fish'. Don't steal my phrase."
     "You don't mind me saying 'dirty fish', do you?" Bonnie asked.
     "It's just a phrase," Maggie said. "Why should I care?"

* * *

"We-united," the man continued, "is our motto." He handed her a bumpersticker: "THE AFU: WE-UNITED FOR AMERICA". Then he said, "According to this resume, you're from Idaho?"
     "Yes," she said, wishing she could erase all the details her resume revealed.
     "Idaho is strong on family. I'm from Wyoming."
     "How'd you get here?"
     "Lord knows," he said, rolling his eyes. "And you?"
     "A friend came first," she said.
     "So why did your friend come?"
     "She's in graduate school."
     "Oh," he said.
     "What's wrong?"
     "It's just -" he started, but never finished.

* * *

"Washington?" Maggie's mother said. "It's all because of Bonnie Miller, isn't it? Bonnie Miller's been leading you by the hair since eighth grade."
     "Bonnie Miller's got nothing to do with it. You've got to have a roommate in big cities."
     Her father chewed on his pipe stem, cherry smoke filling the room. "Washington is full of blacks and politicians."
     "Maybe I'll marry a black politician."
     "Don't try to shock us, young lady," her mother said.      
     "She'll come home with Jesse Jackson on her arm."     
     "It's too liberal there," her mother said.
     "I'm going for no reason at all," Maggie said. "Isn't that good enough?"
     "We know why you're going," her father said.
     "You better hold an aspirin between your legs," her mother said.
     Maggie bit a dictionary full of curses down into her bottom lip, ran into her bedroom and slammed the door. The dirty, dirty fish, she thought.

* * *

"Maggie," the interviewer said, "I need an assistant. It's not glamorous. Some girls - women - interview here because they think it's TV stuff. There's no Sam Donaldson, okay? I've been on CBN seven times. If you think you've seen me, that's probably where."
     Her parents watched CBN, but he hadn't looked familiar, until just now that she finally saw his face. She hadn't looked at him before, not long enough to focus past a blur. Now she saw he was attractive, except for two thingies - she could only think to call them - on either side of his nose. They were not moles or warts, but some type of protrusions. It was difficult not to look at them. They drew her attention first, before the eyes or nose or mouth. Maggie knew women had turned him down because of the thingies. And now she remembered the face with thingies on TV, but she couldn't place the name.
     "It's a lot of scheduling and computer work, filing," he said. "Sometimes you'll accompany me, but it's mostly waiting rooms for you. And there's something more. This is not a family town." He patted her hand. There was no ring where it should be. "They laugh at our beliefs."

* * *

The night before she left for Washington, her father took her to Sam's. They drank White Russians.
     "You watch out for that place," he said.
     "I'm careful."
     "Yeah, but that place if full of -"
     "It's full of dirty fish," she was going to say. "But so is here."
     "It's full of predators," he finished.
     "I'm nothing special," she said. "Men don't chase me."
     "They will."
     "Well," she said, sipping the drink, and then she caught her father looking at her. He fiddled with his napkin. His lips moved but failed to form words.
     "It's not the way it used to be, dad," she said.
     "It wasn't when it was."
     "So then what's the big deal about Washington?"
     "It's just not how we believe there," he said.
     "You don't sound all that convinced."
     On the way home she watched her breath fog the car window, then dissipate. Whenever they came to a traffic light or stop sign, her father sighed. He's not such a dirty fish, she thought.

* * *

"If you want the job," the interviewer said, "you start tonight. There's a meeting of the AFU. I need you to take notes. You'll have a guest pass. Just sit in back and take notes. Three main speakers will each address one of three topics: faith, hope and charity."
     There had been three sisters in her high school named Faith, Hope and Charity, each one a year older than the next. Whatever the parents' intent, the names became a joke around school. The boys all said: "I've got faith I'll fuck the oldest, I hope I get the middle and for charity I'll screw the third."

* * *

"You really got the job?" Bonnie asked.
     "Yes. "
     "And you start tonight?"
     "I just take notes."
     "Hmm," Bonnie said.
     "Why? You sound suspicious."
     "I'm not suspicious. But it's awfully fast to start a job. Was it a man who interviewed you?"
     "What does that have to do with it?"
      "I'm hungry," Bonnie said.
     "You don't eat 'til 7:00."
     "You get a job and now you're mom."
     "I'm not mom. I thought you'd be happy."
     "You just better watch out," Bonnie said.
     "Watch out for what?"
     "You know what I mean. Why do you always act like - like you don't want anything and nothing's important to you? That everybody else is weird because they believe something and you just float off in between?"
     "Where's this coming from?"
     "Where's it coming from?" Bonnie shrieked, and then she bit her lip and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door.

* * *

The boy was kissing Maggie's closed mouth. The sudden weird violence came out of the air like rain in sunlight: It didn't belong, but there it was, sudden and sunlit.
     "Which one are you?" he demanded. "Faith or Hope or Charity?
     "None of them!"
     "Faith or Hope or Charity?"
     She barely recognized him. He was new in school.
     "I'm no charity case," the boy whispered.
      Then Bonnie pulled him off and it was over, as if Maggie had never been touched, as if it didn't happen.
     "It didn't happen," Bonnie proclaimed.
     "It didn't happen," Maggie repeated.
     "Not if you believe me," Bonnie added, touching Maggie's cheek.

* * *

Her parents dropped her off at the airport. They both said they couldn't come inside, couldn't bear it. They never imagined they would say goodbye to their daughter. Maggie wished she'd had an older brother, to go first and do worse, to draw attention and take the heat. But she was on her own.
     She really had no reason for going. Bonnie was already there and had an apartment and needed a roommate, that's all. What was Maggie to say, "I'll miss Love Boat reruns"? There was no defense. She also had to admit that whenever Bonnie suggested something, she usually went along. If Bonnie believed, Maggie believed. Bonnie had enough belief for both of them. Maggie might not jump off a bridge if Bonnie jumped first, but if they joined hands and Bonnie said the water was deep enough and it was safe, she might jump still.
     True, this power had weakened since summer, when Bonnie moved and Maggie was left by herself. She spent more time alone, and for some reason occasionally remembered that time with the boy. It really had happened, and some other things Bonnie promised never did happen. But these questions faded when Bonnie started calling long distance, saying she needed Maggie.
     When Maggie walked into the airport - the white box of an airport that seemed empty of everything but exits and entrances and signs pointing everywhere and nowhere - she had a bad feeling there was as much reason to stay as there was to go. The thought of doing either, of changing her mind or not, made her no less nauseous than the other.
     Since there was an hour before her flight left, she went to the bar and ordered White Russians. On a napkin she drew arrows pointing this way and that, and then she started writing down the words of passersby, jumbled conversations, all noted in tiny letters inside the circle of spilled Kahlua and vodka and creme. She jotted without regard to order but to the spaces and the sighs.
     "School boys get fat fat all the high high the how many days you'll come home Bob sure is one hell flight school boys get bad out there got fat all the you should there well one day you'll fat one day you'll come how you'll come how you have don't know what you see in new bad they need to builds a bad out there come how sure is one nice being home Bob sure is one bitch I owe you a good flight."

* * *

There was no noise from Bonnie's room as Maggie prepared for the meeting. She tried on twelve different tops and settled for the one that pushed up and together the most, because it - because Bonnie said she liked it best, so it must look good.
     She plucked her eyebrows. She heard a sing-song voice: "I wonder what I want tonight, what I want to happen tonight, tonight."
     "What I want, what I want?" Maggie asked herself.
     The thought stayed after her. It would not let her go.
     "You tell me," Maggie thought, "what I want."
     "Whatchoo want, want, want, girlfriend. You know. Oooooooh yeah, you know. You never even asked his name. The way you saw his face all blurry, that's what you do with sound, too. World sure is fuzzy to you, girl. Girl, you live in a fuzzy old world."
     "Huh?"
     She took a cab to the auditorium. She listened to the voice all the way there.

* * *

She looked for the man whose name she had forgotten and tried to figure out where she might have heard a voice like the voice she was thinking in and tried to figure out how you handle a coatroom - do you tip at first or after, and how much do you tip, and when, and when? And it wasn't helping, the "Girl, you is stupid" and the "Should have got his name, ya damn dumb dame."
     Then she remembered she had no paper and she found a table, the only one with just one empty seat. She sat down, relieved she at least had a pen and that beneath her glass of water was a napkin.
     She thought of the bar at the airport. She thought of the CBN. She had seen a man with thingies on that channel. His name was Ben.
     Ben, Ben, she thought, and then the first speaker was speaking, on the subject of Faith. Maggie jotted without regard to order but to the spaces and the sighs.
     "You'll do better. This was a catastrophic change which I learned pretty well. He, you, we go in this regard, in seminary. So I was a bachelor to some. Look, simply got caught up in an old dialogue. Boggles my imagination. To protect the world. Well, go look at the old dialogue. Boggles my imagination to think. I learned pretty well. The birth of attention to family. Do good retail and you'll do better. Got caught up in an old dialogue. Boggles the divorce rate. Do good retail and the history salesman. Do a little Czar. Do good, father time. Do good retail. Do a little Czar."

* * *

"What do we have here," Ben said, snapping the napkin right out of her hand. "Why this -"
     "I have to type it up," she said. "I can hardly read my own handwriting."
     "I can read it fine," he said. "But I can't make any -"
     She turned around and took it back, snapped it right out of his hand. "I'll type it up," she said, and she knew that whoever the sing-song voice belonged to was smiling, in her imagination, or wherever she was, because she heard or thought or was thought: "Girl, now you know: You go and glow."

* * *

"You're a dirty fish," Maggie said, rolling over in Ben's big bed, the biggest she had ever slept in besides her own.
     "You said that in your sleep," Ben said. "What's it mean?"
     "It means the fish seem bright and clean, long as they stay underwater. But if they come out, they're not so clean. They're not so clean in the sun and air."
     "You're talking about I'm not married but I work for the AFU?"
     "That's one thing."
     "Well, I've got time, Maggie. The Lord wasn't married and look what He did for the family."
     "So you really believe in - in what you believe."
     "I've got three bumperstickers on my car. Why shouldn't I believe what I believe?"
     "Last night, my roommate said I try and stay in between things."
     "Nobody likes to be wrong, I suppose. But you've got to take a leap sooner or later."
     "A leap?"
     "A leap of faith."
     "But I could leap in any old direction."
     "That you could," he said, "just like a dirty fish."
     He tried to pull her over to his side of the bed, but she resisted and buried herself in the covers.